Tengen Toppa Princess Bride
by Thhartokk
Summary: What happens when you take Princess Bride and add Gurren Lagann? My guess would be a lot like the series. But why not read and find out! INCOMPLETE/INDEFINITE HIATUS. SORRY.
1. Prologue and Legal Stuff

I was sick in bed at the time, you see. Probably not in my right mind, stuck sick with pneumonia. That's probably why I didn't protest much when that old man came in to tell me a story.

That's what I'd asked for, anyways. I was feeling run down, and one of bro's stories always helped me feel better then, so I asked if anyone had any stories worth telling. But most of them didn't help the problem any, they just told me stuff I already knew. Stories of me and bro, Yoko and Kittan, the whole of the human resistance. Which might have worked fine, except for the part where I was there for the whole thing, so it wasn't anything new and it certainly didn't help much. Which is why the old man helped so much.

Nia had just finished seeing me, and she had left, worried about my well-being. I tossed in bed for about twenty minutes before I realized the old man that always followed her around was still in the room. Despite my illness, I jumped about five feet into the air. "You're… Old Coco, right?" I rasped, heavily. "Don't you usually follow Nia around? Why're you here?"

Wordlessly (just like him) he sat down in the chair next to me and pulled out a book. He opened his mouth, and in a dry voice, spoke. "The following is a work of fiction. Any similarities to characters, living, nonliving, existant or non, is likely a well-planned coincidence. The characters are copyright Studio Gainax, while the plot is copyright S. Morgenstern, and to a lesser extent William Goldman."

"Wait, is this a story or something?"

He continued without even waiting for my reply. "If you have any issue with the work, please take it up with Thhartokk and he'll gladly take the story down, thought you'll understand if he'll archive it first so that he doesn't feel like he's wasted all his time."

Chalk it up to the delirium. "Wait, what?"

"And now, Simon, a story you haven't heard before. It all starts in a far away land, not too long ago…"


	2. In which the story is set up

Nia Teppelin, the first protagonist of our tale, was not the most beautiful girl in the world. She was close, I suppose, within the top hundred or so, but she was not at the top. No, competition up there was for the girls dedicated to keeping themselves looking "young" and "attractive," and due to the mutable nature of such things the positions moved around so much that it involved several full-time careers to even keep the count accurate and unbiased. But the bottom line is that Nia was not perfectly beautiful (though that isn't to say she was ugly), and that was all right with her.

She lived in a place called Jiha village, where the principal crop was dirt. Dirt was very valuable, see. Or if it wasn't no one had yet told the people who actually bought the dirt. While to the untrained eye Jiha village was little more than a hole in the ground, those that were well versed in such things would see the place as a dirt farming center, with its own hierarchy and its own leader. The leaders of the village were a pair of Beastmen, one young and one old, who ran a hot spring business as well as administrating the rest of the dirt farmers in Jiha village. They had found and raised a child (who, as you are already guessing, was Nia) and spent much of their time arguing, especially over how disappointing Nia was to them. The old Beastmen rather liked her and let her do as she pleased, while the younger one wanted her to be much more ladylike.

You see, Nia was just a bit of a tomboy. Not so much as to be ever mistaken as male, but enough that the basic "girly" things that the wealthier liked to do in those days didn't appeal so much to her. She didn't have the same mindset as the other village girls at the time. Rather than running around, trying to look "pretty," she enjoyed taking rides around the countryside in her own personal Ganmen. She had named it "Ganmen," (she never was one for originality) and would oftentimes visit the main part of Jiha village in her spare time. She would care for it with the help of the boy that they had hired to work on their property as a repairman and digger. Appropriately (again, the originality) she called the boy "Digger." The average exchange might go something like this.

"Oh, um. Excuse me, Digger? Could you give me a hand with something?"

At that point the boy would wordlessly shuffle over to Nia, then look up at her, goggles covering his eyes. He would nod, and she would continue.

"I seem to have dropped something into that ravine. It's a shiny green gem I found earlier… would you go get it for me, Digger? I would be ever so grateful."

At which point the boy would wordlessly produce his drill, place it into the ground, and begin digging. After a brief period of time he would emerge with the object, then place it in Nia's hand. She would respond.

"Oh, thank you, Digger."

And that was as far as that relationship went. Nia was never particularly curious about the boy's past or his name or really anything much about him besides what he could do for her. It wasn't really her fault, you see. It was just that she'd never really thought of any other way to address him beyond that. She never looked deeper, seeing (on the few occasions when he'd taken his goggles off) the grim determination in his eyes, a kind of stoic resolve that came from within. She'd never noticed how his body always tensed up during earthquakes, due to how the boy's parents had been killed by one. It wasn't her fault, really. It was just because her surrogate "parents" had neglected to teach her anything worth learning in that regard. He was just a worker, and as a result, it surprised her when he walked up to her one day and announced that he was leaving.

"But… why are you leaving, Digger?"

"Well, for one thing, you never bothered asking my real name. It's Simon, by the way. But that's not important." Simon looked at the sky at that point. "I feel that as long as I'm here, I'll never go anywhere else. Digging in the ground is all well and good, but I feel that if I'm going to go anywhere I'll have to dig my way out up towards the heavens. So, I guess this is goodbye."

"But, Dig- Simon, how will you leave? No one's left Jiha village since that pair so many years ago…"

Simon smiled at that, then held up a small drill, which glowed green in the late afternoon light. "I dug this up a few weeks ago. Yesterday, I found a tiny Ganmen. I'll be using that to leave."

"Oh, you could call it Tiny Ganmen, and then you could stay here and ride it with me…."

"Nia. For starters I've already named it, but that's not important right now. Why exactly is it that you want me to stay?"

"Well, with you gone who will help take care of Ganmen? Who's going to help me when I need someone to help me dig? With you gone, Digger, I won't be able to do so many things…"

With that, Simon suddenly moved close to Nia. "Listen, Nia. Just because I'm leaving, doesn't mean I'll be gone forever. Okay? As long as there are still stars in the sky, I'll come back. I just need to figure some things out, alright? My Ganmen and I will be back before you know it. There's a land across the sea, where they say there's other villages to see, and as soon as I'm done there I'll be right… Nia, what's wrong?"

Nia was beginning to cry. "Simon… I love you. Please don't go!"

Simon wiped the tears away from her face. "I love you too, Nia." And with that, he kissed her.

It was a first kiss for both of them, and understandably was a bit awkward for the most part, but romantic nonetheless. It was difficult for it not to be, given the circumstances that had surrounded it. But back to the story…

Simon finally pulled back after what seemed like an eternity. "Don't you worry. I'll be back before you know it." He smiled before climbing into Lagann, thinking distractedly that he had forgotten to tell her its name and dismissing the notion as mood-killing. "Lagann! Spin on!" He inserted the drill and Lagann whirred to life. He smiled at her just as the canopy closed over him. Lagann's legs turned into a drill, there was a loud whirring noise, and then he was gone.

Nia sniffled a bit, then smiled. "Well, if he's going to be back, then I simply must to my best to be ready for him when he returns." And so it was that Nia went home and immediately began spending her days trying to look at beautiful as possible for her Simon. She stayed indoors washing and scrubbing a lifetime's worth of dirt out of her hair and skin, and slowly but surely she began becoming more beautiful. And people began to take notice.

Slowly and surely, the rest of the girls of Jiha village started to notice the boys turning away from them. And, slowly but surely, Nia began to notice that she was getting a lot more attention from boys than she was used to. And so the girls began vehemently ignoring Nia, which in the long run only really hurt their chances of taking the boys back from Nia, who didn't really care so much about the boys. She simply dealt with them in her quiet, gentle way, politely breaking their hearts as she dealt with them.

A typical exchange might go like this.

"Ah… um… hello, Miss Nia. L-lovely weather we're having, right?"

Nia would look up and notice that the sky was growing overcast and that in the distance it was starting to rain. "I suppose it is if you like that sort of thing."

"Ah, right. L-lousy weather. My bad. So, do you want someone to pilot your Ganmen for you sometime?"

"No, I'm quite all right piloting it by myself, thank you. It helps me to think and clear my head, especially when I'm obsessing over Simon."

"You just think you're too good for us, don't you?"

"No, I'm just saving myself for Simon… you know, Simon?"

"Who?"

Sometimes Nia would go into great detail to explain exactly who the boy was, while other times she'd just give up right then and there and just reject the boy outright. You see, the truth of the matter was, Simon wasn't the biggest influence in the village. As a matter of fact, very few people even remembered who, exactly, he was. If she'd mentioned his name as Digger, they might have connected the dots, but she didn't remember him as Digger and the rest of the village didn't think of him as Simon, so she was stuck. Not that the conversations would have gone any better if she could have told the boys that she was saving herself for someone who'd left the village.

Anyways, over the course of the year she grew more alienated from the rest of the village as well as steadily more beautiful. Finally, right as she began to peak the top ten of the most beautiful women in the world, she received a message from outside the village, about Simon. Her hands were shaking as she opened it and read, in flowery script, the following:

_To anyone concerned from Jiha Village:_

_We regret to inform you that the boy known as Simon the Digger, hailing from Jiha village, has been captured and presumably killed by the dreadful Spiral King. As much as we would like to comfort you with some kind of hope, we can only tell you that no one who ever faces the Spiral King has ever survived. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. _

_ Sincerely, _

_ AS Census Services_

A tear flowed to Nia's eye for a brief moment, before she stiffened slightly, straightened perfectly, and she began speaking in a monotone. "I suppose, then, that I will never love again. It is inefficient to attempt to love a Spiral Life Form, after all." The tear finally falls to the ground as she looked down. Her eyes hardened and narrowed, and she spoke again. "They'll only destroy everything over time."


End file.
